Where is God when it hurts?

The cyclone episode in Burma and the earthquake in China was quite upsetting particularly because of the high number of lives lost but more so because in Burma, lives are not given any value.

The government in Burma is letting only a trickle of aid in and wants to control how it is distributed. They seem unwilling to put aside their agenda at a time when compassion and consideration is called for.

As I pondered on the devastation over the lives, the beauty and the resources of part of this country I wondered at its necessity. Why God? Why so many lives lost? Why to a people that are not able to rebuild their lives on their own? It seems that the worst of natural disasters always hit the poorest of the poor. Why God Why?

I had so many questions. It was timely then that I happened to have picked up a book by Philip Yancey, just a few days before the first disaster took place. Titled "Where is God when it hurts?" it has helped me garner a new found appreciation and a healthy respect for pain and the unpleasant.

Yancey's take is that much of the suffering on our planet has come about because of two pirnciples that God built into creation; a physical world that runs according to consistent natural laws, and human freedom.

For instance, according to natural laws, there can be no pleasure without pain. Our bodies do not have any pleasure sensors. However, pleasure comes from the very same sensors in our body that was made to help us acknowledge and recognise pain.

Weather scientists have found that the world's climatic system is totally dependent on typhoons. Bangladesh and India have learned that in the years that typhoons stay away, rains stay away too. I hope there is a first rate vindication for earthquakes and cyclones too.

Genesis (the first book of the Bible) traces the entrace of suffering and evil into the world through the wonderful but terrible quality of human freedom.

Animals have instinctual behaviour, but as a result of our freedom, we homo sapiens alone have introduced something new to Earth - rebellion against the original design.

G. K. Chesterton (quoted in the book) wrote: "We talk of wild animals, but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of tribe or type."

He also wrote: "In making the world, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem but rather a play; a play He had planned as perfect, but which has necessarily been left to human actors and stage managers, who have since made a great mess of it."

A lot of what happens is our own fault isn't it? Cancer is caused by the terrible things we humans have created and sprayed on vegetables, or put on our skin or added to our food. The earth's climate is changing because we only care about our personal conveniences.

As Yancey succinctly put it, "Man is wild because he alone, on this speck of molten rock called earth, stands up, shakes his fist, and says to God, "I do what I do because I want to do it.""

Yancey believes that somehow, pain and suffering multiplied on earth as a consequence of the abuse of human freedom. When we rebelled against God, the world was forever spoiled and since then the earth and its inhabitants have been emitting a "constant stream of low-frequency distress signals." This is the "groaning" planet we now live in.

"Thus," he says, "any discussion of the unfairness of suffering must begin with the fact that God is not pleased with the condition of the planet either."

God intends to restore the planet to its original design. Until then, we have to live with the consequences of our own folly, and something else called natural laws.

On Pain, By Khalil Gibran

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break,
that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life,
your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart,
even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity: For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen, And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.